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An Open Letter to Female Programmers

This post was originally published on Braintree Payments’ blog, Strongly Typed here.

To every woman who codes,

I’ve been writing code myself for 17 years. As a female programmer (among other things), I’ve met a range of men who work in the IT/technology/programming space and I’ve had a variety of positive and negative experiences with them. Of course, I also know women who code at other companies and I’ve heard stories that make my blood boil.

So today I’m writing to let you in on something that I hope isn’t a secret, but still it should be shouted from the rooftops – Braintree is an awesome place for women who code to work.

Let me tell you the top four reasons why I’m comfortable saying that:

First of all, across the board I’m impressed with our development team’s conduct. Yes, we’re cool (we have the requisite startup-like ping pong table, beer pong, gaming systems, food, and other perks), but our development team is nowhere close to a frat party. It’s more like a weekend barbecue you could take your kids to while having geeky, intellectual conversations with friends. The development team here is not only on the top of their game technically — they are just people I find awesome in general. I’ve never felt disrespected or talked down to or objectified by any of our developers. In fact, I participated in the interview process for one particular male job candidate who made the mistake of saying something some of the other devs found sexist. I have never in my life been more impressed with a group of men than when we were discussing the candidate at the end of the day — me and eight guys — and the circle was adamant they did not want someone sexist in the Braintree culture. It was quite honestly one of the most profound things I’ve ever witnessed.

Secondly, Braintree employees have a work-life balance. We have a decked-out mother’s room for nursing. We have fathers and mothers and unspawned people who work from home for various reasons on various days whether a kid is sick, someone has to be there for furniture delivery, or it’s just the right thing on the right day for you to do. The work is getting done, and getting done well, which is what matters. The hours are pretty great too. Yes, if you are on call then you are on call, or if some emergency has come up and it’s your responsibility, then you’re going to work to get it done — but most of the time, it’s 9 to 5-ish.

Fourth, we have women in positions of power. From the heads of our Account Management, Recruitment, and Support teams to two of the three lead Product Managers — women here are very much in positions of authority.

Don’t get me wrong this is a workplace and we provide mission-critical services to our merchants, which is something we take very seriously. Our technical interview process has a reputation for being hard for a reason. No, this is not utopia where everyone agrees on how to solve every problem — we’re all smart and that means we can see lots of different variations on solutions. It’s not perfect, but I’d place Braintree in the top 1% of places for female coders to work in the United States.

Maybe we’re the perfect place for you, maybe we aren’t — but as one female programmer to another: please, look through our job listings, send in an application, and maybe soon you, too, could become a proud Braintreep Dev.